Council Update: Strong Mayor Powers, Reserves, Vehicle Noise

Agenda, July 10

Strong Mayor Powers
Council’s marathon meeting spilled into Thursday! The item drawing the most attention was my motion on Strong Mayor Powers. I proposed that HRM write the Province to request that they consult with municipalities regarding any change in municipal government. It was necessary to bring this motion forward because since practically day one of Mayor Fillmore’s term, the topic of Strong Mayor Powers has been swirling in political circles. Speculation has been running wild, but all the actual discussion has been behind closed doors out of public view. Fillmore has said he hasn’t formally requested Strong Mayor Powers, but acknowledges it has been discussed, and last week he dropped the charade and publicly indicated that it’s something he wants. So what are Strong Mayor Powers and what might they mean for HRM?

The Current System
In our current system, the mayor chairs council and represents the municipality. The mayor has very few extra powers, which means on paper, the mayor is a “weak” figure, but that’s only on paper. The actual reality of the mayor’s role in our system is much more complicated. The authority that comes from being elected at-large gives the mayor enormous persuasive power. Representing the municipality and chairing Council meetings brings leadership opportunities that councillors don’t have. The mayor can convene, cajole, and persuade. Within the bureaucracy, the mayor enjoys preferential access to senior staff and has his own office/policy staff that are responsible to him. In comparison, councillors have a half-time civil service assistant. The mayor has a lot of soft power and in the hands of someone who knows how to wield that influence, a mayor can get a lot done.

It has been reported that Mike Savage was offered Strong Mayor Powers, but he turned them down. Why? He didn’t need them. He knew how to lead. He knew how to persuade Council, how to approach issues, and when and where to compromise. There were times on close votes when Mike Savage left the chair to speak for a position that I was against and my immediate thought in those moments was usually “damn it, I just lost.” Mike had that kind of influence. Strong mayors don’t need Strong Mayor Powers. Strong Mayor Powers are a crutch for Mayors who haven’t figured out how to make things work or lack the leadership skills to deliver. We’re still very early into this new Council’s term. Mayor Fillmore is still learning the job and doesn’t even have his office fully hired yet. There is still time to course correct and lean into working with and leading Council, to be an actual strong mayor, but that’s up to him.

So what could Strong Mayor Powers look like?

A Biased Civil Service
In Ontario, Strong Mayor Powers have given mayors the ability to hire and fire the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and senior staff. Instead of the CAO reporting to Council like the case now, the CAO is instead responsible to one person. No one is infallible and giving the mayor alone the ability to control senior staff would undermine the impartiality of the civil service. Instead of providing Council with evidence-based advice and then letting the political chips fall where they may, staff in a Strong Mayor Powers system would feel pressure to write reports that the aligns with the mayor’s agenda. They might pull their punches, avoid uncomfortable truths, and tailor advice to fit what the person who can hire, fire, or demote them wants to hear. The biggest strength of the civil service at the municipal level is the non-partisan advice and that they are pretty free to speak truth to power. This would be potentially severely undermined by a Strong Mayor Powers system and is why the Nova Scotia Association of Municipal Administrators spoke out this week. A strong mayor system risks being more about who you know rather than what you know.

In the debate of my motion, Mayor Fillmore made the argument that senior civil servants are appointed by the Prime Minister and Premiers in the federal and provincial systems. That might seem normal to Fillmore given that he was an MP, but he’s not in Ottawa anymore. The federal and provincial systems are very different from the municipal one. A Prime Minister or Premier has enormous power, but they also are part of a cabinet and a party. They’ve not only won an election, but also a leadership contest and have faced a lot of scrutiny. They have been much more rigorously tested. A mayor, in comparison, is much more an island of one. A single individual. It’s a very different reality and not an apples to apples comparison. It has also been pointed out to me since publishing this blog that a Prime Minister or Premier can be turfed if they get too far offside. Lose the confidence of the legislature and an early election is a possibility. There are no equivalent mechanisms at the municipal level. The only way a sitting mayor gets removed is if they are convicted of a criminal offence or stop showing up to meetings.

Democracy
Besides the bias and the corruption potential in the civil service, a Strong Mayor Powers system would also fundamentally change democratic representation. In Ontario, mayors have the power to draft the municipal budget, and can pass motions with just 1/3 of their Council’s support. To override the mayor, 2/3rds of Council needs to agree. This turns Council into a weak check on the mayor rather than a governing body.

No one person, not myself, not my colleagues, not the mayor, can represent the full diversity of views that make up HRM. No one can. Collectively though, we get closer to that ideal. In 2024, the public voted for the most diverse Council in HRM’s history. For the first time, Council is made up of a majority of women, we have two African Nova Scotians, and one openly LGBTQIA2S+. Fillmore has suggested more than once that Council isn’t representing all the views in the community. To suggest that concentrating power in his hands would somehow broaden representation just makes no sense at all. It is a self-serving pitch for more power that will diminish the representation of communities, particularly the more marginalized ones (in the same vein, the Mayor was the only one this past week who voted to reduce public participation during HRM budget deliberations).

The mayor is elected at large, and that brings authority and weight, but Councillors are elected too. In pushing for Strong Mayor Powers, Fillmore keeps talking about his strong mandate, but in the last election, councillors collectively received more votes than the mayor. Fillmore’s 42% of the vote is actually the lowest total for any Mayor in HRM’s entire history. No one has squeaked into office with less than him!

The weak result doesn’t take away from Fillmore’s victory. He won and he absolutely should try to deliver on what he promised. But the suggestion that he keeps making about having a strong mandate and that he’s being blocked from carrying out the people’s clearly articulated through him will is simply not true. His is objectively the weakest mayoral result in HRM’s entire history, which is a strange place to argue for more powers from.

A Blocked Agenda? Hardly
Mayor Fillmore has suggested that he needs Strong Mayor Powers to get things done because his agenda is being blocked. I would challenge that. Just what has been blocked? Fillmore got his way on the budget and the tax rate was kept flat. Fillmore is strongly in favour of the Windsor Street Exchange project, and although it was a messy, he ultimately got his way on that too. His encampment motion was voted down, not because anyone thinks that encampments are a good idea, but because there aren’t alternative spaces available for everyone. Fillmore has made no major motions on housing yet, but did lose a close vote to add two stories to an apartment building along the Bedford Highway. On housing, I would note that HRM did deliver the Regional Plan to the Province on time. On bike lanes, Council turned down Fillmore’s motion, mainly because he wanted to halt active projects. Council did, however, approve Councillor Mancini’s motion to look at the overall program, which was at least part of what Fillmore was asking for. Surely the seeming need for Strong Mayor Powers isn’t based on two specific bike lanes on two Downtown streets? Such a radical and long-lasting fundamental change in municipal government needs a stronger basis than that!

It has been messy, but so far Fillmore has won more than he has lost, especially if you’re looking at the big picture items like the budget. Municipal government is made up of independent councillors who need to be convinced that a particular action is the right decision. It isn’t like federal or provincial politics where there are parties and everyone blindly follows their party leader’s direction. City Hall is a permanent minority government with 17 political parties. That Fillmore hasn’t gotten his way 100% of the time isn’t some sort of system failure. If the objective is the mayor should always get his way, then we really don’t need a council, and the mayor isn’t really a mayor, he’s a king.

What’s Next
Ultimately, Council voted 16-1 in favour of my motion (Fillmore voted against citing he was in a conflict in sending letters on behalf of Council). The Mayor will now write the Province indicating that HRM would like to be consulted if the Province is contemplating major changes to municipal government in Nova Scotia. Strong Mayors would be a major change in our democratic system and I think the public should also have a say. Strong Mayors weren’t part of anyone’s platform at the municipal or provincial level and I would question whether, in the absence of consultation, anyone has a mandate to bring them in as a fait accompli from some backroom deal. This change requires more consideration than that.

What Can you Do?
If you think, as I do, that Strong Mayor Powers are a bad idea, this can potentially still be stopped. The Provincial government will ultimately make the decision on this, not HRM Council or Mayor Fillmore. The Houston government has shown that they do listen to the public and do change their mind when there is a lot of negative feedback. The decision to drop changes to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act back in the Spring comes to mind. So if you think Strong Mayor Powers are a bad idea, please write!

Tim Houston, Premier, premier@novascotia.ca, pictoueastamanda@gmail.com
John Lohr, Minister of Municipal Affairs, dmamin@novascotia.ca, johnlohrmla@gmail.com
Your own MLA (find them here)

Reserve Policy:
As a second part of our budget discussions from Tuesday, Council considered a report on the municipality’s financial reserves, aka our savings accounts. Like the budget report, the news on savings isn’t good.

Capital projects are becoming more expensive and there are a lot of major items in various stages of approval: Bedford ferry, Windsor Street Exchange, AAA Bike Network, Forum rebuild, 50 metre pool, Wanderer’s Block redevelopment, Burnside Transit Centre, new police headquarters, etc. Some of these projects are in our capital plan, but some haven’t been budgeted for. HRM simply doesn’t have the money to build all of this! HRM’s 10 year capital plan exceeds $2,000,000,000 in projects and the municipality’s debt load is already rising. This isn’t sustainable.

The Province measures municipal financial capacity by measuring debt related to total revenue. A 10% debt load is considered moderate risk, while 15% is high risk. If Council takes no action to right the ship, in about seven years, HRM will be pushing a 10% debt load and all that debt will require payments, which will drive up taxes. Debt will be a growing proportion of the municipal budget. As any homeowner with a mortgage knows, having a down payment reduces your costs! The more you have to make a down payment, the lower the overall cost! Debt isn’t necessarily bad since it allows costs to be spread out over long periods, meaning that everyone who uses a facility over its life helps pay for it. It’s about finding the right balance. HRM needs to be putting more into saving for major projects.

So how does Council right the ship? For me, the major opportunity is deed transfer tax. The deed transfer tax is a 1.5% charge on the sale price of properties. Since it depends on sales and prices in the real estate market, it is prone to fluctuations. Deed transfer tax revenue is much more volatile compared to property taxes. Part of why HRM is pressed on our budget now is we didn’t budget conservatively on deed transfer tax revenue in the early 2020s and instead used rosy projections to plug holes in the operating budget. When deed transfer tax revenue declined in 2023, this left a hole for Council to make up, both in having to pay off the deficit, and then right-size the go forward projections. We’ve already been burned!

Since deed transfer tax revenue is volatile, the prudent thing to do is leave a large cushion in that budget. Ideally, projections turn out alright and HRM will then be left with a surplus, a surplus that could then be allocated to capital reserves to fund one-time projects. We can kill two birds with one stone here if we budget conservatively. In good times, HRM would have an ongoing source of future capital dollars and in bad times, HRM would be protected from being left with shortfalls. This is something I spoke about in budget deliberations and I’m pleased that staff agreed that it was a good idea and essentially have adopted it into a new deed transfer tax policy.

Under the new approach, Council will limit the amount of deed transfer revenue that can be used to fund the operating budget to $60,000,000. Any funds collected above $60,000,000 will be allocated to HRM’s savings to fund future capital projects. This is expected to net $3,000,000 – $7,000,000 of new funding for HRM’s reserves in 2026. This is what prudent forward-thinking budgeting looks like.

The challenge will be getting Council to stick to being prudent, especially during good times when deed transfer revenue might generate significant surpluses. As we saw with the decision to spend the $10,000,000 Central Library reserve to keep this year’s tax bill lower than it otherwise would have been, immediate political needs can run contrary to long-term planning. It can be hard to be disciplined when there are immediate political wins to be had in short-term thinking.

There is hope though that this Council will think more long-term. The vote on the Central Library reserve was very close and I think there has been a lot of reflection on that decision since. Council seems to be getting it and the level of discussion around long-term sustainability has been encouraging. For added incentive, this is actually mostly going to be a problem that the current Council will have to contend with. In the debate, I pointed out to my colleagues that if we run up the municipal credit card and are facing 10-15% debt loads within seven years… that is just one election away! If past trends around turnover at Council holds, many of the folks making decisions now will be around to either celebrate or rue the choices we make over the next few years. Hopefully we won’t be cursing our past selves for a lack of discipline and prudence!

Vehicle Noise:
A bit of a flip back to the June 24 Council meeting. More detail on this item was requested on reddit so I’m going to fill this in. I spent a bunch of ink defending the civil service in my Strong Mayor Powers write up above, but no one is perfect and the vehicle noise discussion that has been going on for the last number of years is very much proof of that!

Vehicle noise has been an ongoing source of complaint in HRM. Council has heard those complaints and there have been multiple reports on the issue over the years. The origin of the report before us on June 24 actually goes back to 2017. In 2017, the Transportation Standing Committee received an information report on vehicle noise. Information reports don’t have staff recommendations, they’re a starting point for discussions. TSC took the report and attached a recommendation that Regional Council write the Province requesting that the Province take action through regulation and the Motor Vehicle Act to address excessive vehicle noise. Most the vehicles that cause noise on our streets aren’t built to be noisy, it’s after-market modifications that make them loud, and that’s in the Province’s ability to control and regulate.

There was a lot of discussion at Regional Council and what Council was told in 2017 was that police issue only a handful of noisy vehicle tickets, primarily because, without any objective standards and vague wording in the Motor Vehicle Act, it’s hard to get tickets to stand up in Court. This was really the basis for Council’s request. Here’s the video from 2017 (police response at 3:22 indicating the law is flawed)

https://archive.isiglobal.ca/vod/halifax/archive_2017-10-17.mp4.html

Skip ahead to 2021 and the Province actually responded with legislative changes. It wasn’t quite what we asked for though. Instead of taking action in their jurisdiction, the Province amended the Motor Vehicle Act to allow municipalities to adopt their own vehicle noise bylaws with objectively measurable decibel standards. Rather than go after after-market modifications, the Province downloaded the issue to municipalities.

So with the ball back in HRM’s court, staff brought forward a report in 2023 recommending that Council, not adopt any new vehicle bylaws. Despite what we were told in 2017, suddenly staff were of the opinion that the law was fine and police don’t need any additional authority. Council was pretty cranky about this recommendation since it was very much the opposite of what were told in 2017. Facing criticism, the CAO opted to pull the 2023 report to take a second look at the issue. What was back before was was that second look and the staff recommendation remained essentially the same: don’t enact any new bylaw standards. Definitely not our finest hour. A whole bunch of wasted time.

I personally feel that the 2017 report should have simply said “we don’t have the police resources to effectively enforce this” instead of excuses about flawed laws that seem now to not be an issue. Solicitor John Traves acknowledged the failings during discussion as “I agree with Councillor Austin that the 2017 report could have been a lot clearer.”

So what happens next? Council accepted the recommendation not to adopt a vehicle noise bylaw with set decibel standards at this time, but that’s not the end of the story. The Board of Police Commission and staff in HRM’s Public Safety department will look at what would be needed to effectively deal with this issue in terms of police, bylaw, and maybe a public awareness campaign. A further report will come back to Council in the future. That’s probably what the 2017 report should have said in the first place!

Other:

• Requested a staff report on closing the Cogswell Park designated encampment, on extending access-a-bus service beyond the transit service boundary, renumbering civic numbers on Mansion Avenue in Spryfield, and on relaxing taxi and limosine licensing rules to better serve the tourism industry